Police Raid Pirate Site, Seize 60 Servers Following MPAA Complaint (torrentfreak.com) 60
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: When it comes to shutting down pirate sites, few groups have a longer history than the Motion Picture Association of America. The Hollywood organization has dozens of pirate scalps under its belt and today is able to claim another. Serving more than a million users every day, FS.to was one of Ukraine's largest pirate sites. Ranked the country's 21st most popular site overall, the movie-focused platform attracted the attention of the MPAA and local rights holders alike. That has resulted in one of the biggest raids ever seen in the country. According to the cyber crime division of Ukraine's national police, an operation shut down the platform Monday following a complaint from Hollywood. The authorities say that 19 people suspected of running the site via a network of local and offshore companies were arrested. The operation to shut the site appears to have been significant. Raids took place at the offices and homes of the suspects, plus datacenters where equipment running the site was installed. Thus far around 60 servers have been seized from a range of local ISPs but the operation is still ongoing so the tally could increase. Local sources indicate that the authorities have linked local Internet company Ferazko Holding Inc. with FS since it owns several of the site's domains including FS.to, BRB.to and FS.ua.
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Perhaps you should boycott all of their content.
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Perhaps you should boycott all of their content.
I don't know about everybody else, but that's exactly what I do. I live quite happily without what they peddle.
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I never pay for content they claim artificial scarcity on, does that count as a boycot too? :-)
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Perhaps you should boycott all of their content.
I don't know about you, but I did ~15 years ago. Doesn't seem to be stopping them from getting their hands on helping to write stuff like TPP though does it? It also doesn't help that the media likes to denigrate other forms of entertainment like gaming as "it'll turn you into a mass shooter" or "it makes children into murders" for example. Even though the video game industry is bigger than hollywood.
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The current Ukraine coup junta was installed when neonazi groups supported by the EU/US forcibly removed the ligitimate government. And I'm not making up the neonazi part, they are actually marching through the streets with swastika's. So they have to do their masters bidding, wether their own population agrees or not.
Re: The MPAA (Score:2)
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now we have a saboteur destroying the country while the nazis will soon be on the streets
Don't feel lonely, this sums up America pretty well too.
Russians want their monopoly (Score:1)
Pirate site.. LOL.
Meanwhile, the Russians run sites where you can pay a few bucks for the same shitty rips and cam files as you find on torrent sites.
Don't believe me?
www.movieberry.com
Re:"Pirate site" (Score:4, Informative)
They had a ton of films and TV shows streaming on demand, with a good ratings and comment system. They streamed everything themselves and made money by embedding ads inside the streams. Their player had multiple language subtitles for many films. There was also an enormous list of serials/cracks that was much better than the putrid remains of astalavista. Sample page [archive.fo] for a movie listing.
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What the MPAA ought to do, then, is seize the site assets, anglicize (or internationalize) everything, and set up their own site that charges a couple bucks per stream without any advertising. Of course we know that will never happen, they'd rather bitch and moan about piracy than provide more consumer-friendly options.
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Nice try, but you are full of shit.
Pay for your content.
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I didn't get that impression when looking at several file sharing sites.
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It's not a crime anyway. Corporations may think they have a right to monopolies as a profit model, but the only reasons they have it is because they bribe politicians better than ordinary people.
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Bribed the Wrong People (Score:1)
They should have set that server farm up in the Crimea. Then they could have bribed the Russians to make sure shit like this did not happen.
Ukraine that wealthy country (Score:2)
MPAA, Raids, Who Are The Pirates? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's right, the MPAA has been found guilty of pirating movies. Thousands of movies have been found on MPAA computers that they have no license, or rights to.
The MPAA has also paid companies to issue DMCA takedown on their behalf. Where tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of DMCA takedown have been in violation of the law.
Why don't they... (Score:3)
Instead of storing a music track (or movie) as an MP3 or MP4 file on a single server, why not break it up into a bitstream in chunks of less than a byte and distribute it amongst a large number of servers. Each file on each server would then appear to be nothing but a random bitstream bearing no relation to the actual original work.
To access/download said movie/music, all you need is the right piece of software and the key which activates a function that downloads the bitstream fragments from the relevant servers and re-orders them into the original track.
This way, no server will have a copy of the copyright-infringing material that could be recognised as the offending work so surely could not be the subject of a copyright violation.
Since the servers would be useless without the key and the key would be useless without the servers -- neither part constitutes the copyrighted work.
Yeah, it's a form of distributed encryption -- but how do copyright holders issue a takedown notice for something that is clearly not their copyrighted content?
Just a thought. Probably already been done because there's nothing new in the universe.
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Neither part constitues copyrighted work, but:
a) try explaining this to the police raiding Your servers,
b) MPAA/RIAA doesn't care -- they will charge You with copyright infringement anyway,
c) same thing had been argued about torrent files and the pirate bay, and look where the founders are now.
Once You get a lawsuit, even if You are ultimately found not guilty, it costs You money, time and effort to defend against it, and takes You off the Internet. That's the point.
Re:Why don't they... (Score:4, Insightful)
A few p2p clients have tried that approach, like the OFF System. It didn't catch on because the overheads are just nasty (As much as doubling the amount you need to download for OFF).
It's also legally uncertain. Judges are fully capable of recognising when someone is trying to deliberately subvert the intent of the law, and usually frown upon it - if there is any way they can find you liable, they will.
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He knows very well that means an invasion from the US. I mean, starving your own population and threatening others with nuclear missles is one thing, but violating copyrights is an entirely different matter, which calls far more serious reactions.
Glad they have that problem taken care of (Score:2)
one of the biggest raids ever seen in the country.
Really? Is this really how Ukrainians want their tax money spent? Kowtowing to the MPAA? I have a feeling you wouldn't have to ask too many people over there to find better ways they would like their money spent.
Related, what.cd shut down (Score:2)
What.cd Shuts Down Following Reported Raids in France [torrentfreak.com]
What.cd [what.cd] wasn't a mere torrent site, it was a library of alexandria for audiophiles. What was lost will probably never be recovered. This should be a crime against humanity, but no, muh copyrights...